Warning

The world needs cooling – air conditioning, industrial cooling, data cooling, medical cooling as well as a ‘cold chain’ of refrigerated food storage and transport. And global demand for cooling is expected to grow significantly in the coming decades.

On July 29th, ACORE hosted a leadership meeting on the financing of third-party-owned renewable energy systems at military installations. The meeting featured the Assistant Secretary for Energy with the U.S. Army, Katherine Hammack, and the Assistant Secretary for Energy with the U.S. Navy (and former ACORE CEO!), Dennis McGinn.

A majority of us cannot fathom a world without electricity. For this reason, the means by which we harness energy is imperative. By obtaining energy though sustainable means, such as offshore wind, not only are we reducing carbon emissions associated with fossil fuel burning, but we also advance into energy independence. Reducing our hunger for fossil fuels will also decrease our vulnerability to international crises and conflicts.

Solar energy is the most abundant source of energy available on the planet, and it has been harnessed in the conventional form of photovoltaic (PV) cells for over half a century. The improvements in efficiency and reductions in hardware costs in recent years have resulted cost decreases of over 40% and have led to significant increases in installments worldwide. In fact, 29% of electricity generation capacity added in 2013 came from solar installments. But staying ahead of climate change will take more significant adoption of renewables. Fortunately there are still plenty of opportunities to continue driving costs down and encouraging more widespread deployment.

Wherever there are people, there is waste. That’s just a fact. However, what humanity has chosen to do with that waste has changed throughout the years. First, of course, we didn’t do anything. But that wasn’t sanitary, so we started to bury it. Now, advances in technology have made burying waste inefficient.